2012-06-28
Syrian Slogfest
We've had a breakthrough. Turkey has said "if Syrian troops approached Turkey's borders, they would be seen as a threat". It's altogether quite farcical of course. Syria is of absolutely no threat to Turkey. But that doesn't matter. What matters is that a whole farcical NATO session has been held, building up the pretense that Syria is indeed a threat, and that if Syrian forces *approach* the Turkish border then they will be seen as a threat. I'm not even sure how well the border is demarkated. All you need to do is set up plausible deniability. So here's how you do it.
Syrian tanks have basically been told that they can't *approach* the Turkish border. So e.g. if they were within about 1km or 500m, doesn't really matter, of reaching Turkey, then Turkey opens fire, destroying tanks or planes. What that means is that the rebels have a defacto 500m buffer zone, where they can set up shop, and receive weapons shipments in by sea from friendly countries. (basically religiously-bigotted Sunnis).
While normally I would not back a guerilla force, this is not normally. This is a situation where people are liable to defect, the military is comprised of Sunnis who definitely want to defect, given an opportunity. Even without a good way of getting weapons into the country, the Syrians rebels are managing to hold ground. How much more effective will they be with a weapon flow? And the weapons that they will be able to get access to are western weapons, to be used against Soviet crap. It's no longer a slam dunk for government weaponry. It is perhaps the end of the beginning. The focus now is to see just what is militarily possible to achieve by a rebel force in this situation. Basically military history needs to be written. We simply don't have data for this exact situation (government still able to fly planes, and not under threat of air attack either). It is vital for military science that we get this data point.
The fairy tales told about Vietnam do NOT provide this data point.
Godspeed my Syrian brothers.
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Syrian tanks have basically been told that they can't *approach* the Turkish border. So e.g. if they were within about 1km or 500m, doesn't really matter, of reaching Turkey, then Turkey opens fire, destroying tanks or planes. What that means is that the rebels have a defacto 500m buffer zone, where they can set up shop, and receive weapons shipments in by sea from friendly countries. (basically religiously-bigotted Sunnis).
While normally I would not back a guerilla force, this is not normally. This is a situation where people are liable to defect, the military is comprised of Sunnis who definitely want to defect, given an opportunity. Even without a good way of getting weapons into the country, the Syrians rebels are managing to hold ground. How much more effective will they be with a weapon flow? And the weapons that they will be able to get access to are western weapons, to be used against Soviet crap. It's no longer a slam dunk for government weaponry. It is perhaps the end of the beginning. The focus now is to see just what is militarily possible to achieve by a rebel force in this situation. Basically military history needs to be written. We simply don't have data for this exact situation (government still able to fly planes, and not under threat of air attack either). It is vital for military science that we get this data point.
The fairy tales told about Vietnam do NOT provide this data point.
Godspeed my Syrian brothers.
# posted by Paul Edwards @ 06:37 
